


men who are afraid of the light

by beepbeep (aceface)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 19:55:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20699003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceface/pseuds/beepbeep
Summary: Eddie survives.-“Well,” says Richie. “I wanted to fuck Paul Bunyan and nothing turns you off your homosexual urges like a murder clown filling his mouth with dagger teeth. Can you imagine those wrapped around your dick? Worst blowjob ever.”





	men who are afraid of the light

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure there are a lot of 'Eddie lives' by now but I only just saw the movie and I couldn't get this out of my head until I wrote it down. I hope someone else enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Oh, and some of the views and language are probably offensive. Because, you know. Richie.

Eddie wakes up.

It's disorientating, not least because he didn't realise that he'd fallen asleep. In fact - he casts his mind about, searching for memories like a tongue prodding at a loose tooth and finding only the space where it was. It's blank in a way that panics him, and he doesn't know _why_ which only makes things worse - a big empty space where he knows something important was.

Something scary.

He doesn’t open his eyes right away because he’s worried that he’s breathing too fast and it’s easier to regulate his breathing with his eyes closed. He’s had a lot of practice. Something bad definitely happened and Eddie _can’t remember what it was_, just remembers dreams about turtles and rituals and monsters that look like clowns.

His heart is pounding so hard that Eddie’s pretty convinced that he’s having a heart attack. There are noises seeping in, beeping and static and it all rushes up inside his ears until the world slips away again and Eddie falls back into sleep.

-

Eddie wakes up again, and he still doesn’t want to open his eyes. At some point, he’ll have to. At some point, probably the same point, he’ll also have to address the possibility that he might be dead. Unfortunately, this is terrifying. It shouldn’t be. Being dead should really be the _least_ terrifying thing, because you can’t get sick anymore and nothing can hurt you.

But if Eddie’s dead, there’s a level of consciousness right now that he’s not really a fan of. He doesn’t want to see his mother again. He doesn’t want to see -

_Stan_.

Noise again, static, and the world swims away from him.

-

This time, he opens his eyes. He’s still not convinced that he isn’t dead but then the blinding light dials down a notch and the room comes into focus. White walls, white sheets, and Eddie’s confused about whether this is heaven or hell until the beeping makes sense.

It’s a hospital room. Of course it is. Everything Eddie does leads to winding up dead in a hospital room.

Richie is there, gangly limbs sprawled out over a hospital chair. He looks like he's about to slide right out of it, his glasses low on his nose, snoring softly. For a minute, Eddie sees Richie when he was younger, that summer - pale, smooth skin and thick shiny hair. It's like a seeing-eye picture, one frame superimposed over the other, and then Eddie blinks and it's just... Richie.

At any age, Richie is always more Richie than anyone else Eddie has ever met. Which is probably stating the obvious but that’s why Bill’s the writer and Eddie’s the risk analyst.

Eddie says, out loud, just to test that his voice still works, “Am I paralysed?”

Richie wakes up all at once, limbs flailing as he falls sideways off the chair, catching himself at the last minute. He pushes his glasses up, settling back into the chair and staring at Eddie.

“You’re alive.”

“As far as I know,” Eddie says. “Am I paralysed? Do I need a wheelchair? Is there a virus? Oh God, I caught something from the sewers, didn’t I, I told you about greywater and you all fucking laughed at me-”

“You’re not paralysed,” Richie says. He’s still staring at Eddie like he’s about to vanish. “The doctors don’t think so, anyway. You’re not ill, you’re just - you were knocked out, you hit your head - they didn’t know if you’d wake up.”

“I knew it,” Eddie says miserably. “Brain damage. I’ve got brain damage.”

“Yeah, what else is new?” Richie says. He shakes his head a little bit, reaches up to push his hands through his hair and says, “God, I missed you, you little shit.”

“Yeah?” Eddie says and Richie says, “Yeah, I couldn’t fuckin’ sleep and nothing knocks me out faster than hearing you try to explain risk analysis.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, “that’s really rude, when I’m in hospital and dealing with fucking _brain damage_, Jesus, Richie, for once you could be respectful-”

He breaks off, weirdly, because Richie’s not interrupting him. He’s got used to being cut off, to stopping for Richie to make some dumb quip or pull a face or just generally being a little shit - yeah, Richie’s taller than him now but it’s not like that means anything.

“Stop staring at me,” he says and Richie breaks into a grin, tips his chair back on two legs.

“Just glad to be here.”

Eddie feels himself drifting off, falling back into sleep. He sees Richie’s smile on the inside of his eyelids.

-

Eddie dreams that his arm’s been bitten off and wakes screaming, grabbing for his stump. He dreams that a turtle vomits him up, that Mike is in the hospital bed next to him, that this is all an illusion within an illusion and Pennywise is just waiting for him, a dream within a dream within a dream.

Once, he dreams that Richie dies.

Richie’s always there when Eddie wakes up, sleeping in the hospital chair. Eddie tried asking the nurse to bring a cot in but Richie said he wouldn’t fit there anyway, and made some kind of bad joke about Eddie’s mom and getting into bed which didn’t make any fucking sense but Eddie didn’t want to say so. Not when Richie keeps _looking_ at him like that, gray faced and solemn.

-

There are things that Eddie thinks he remembers and things that he thinks are dreams. Those are the easy ones. There’s also a whole host of other things inside his head that he can’t seem to sort into either category.

"I think," Eddie says, "that my dreams and memories are mixed up."

"If you remember fighting a fuckin' psycho clown murderer then you've got it right," Richie says. He looks exhausted. Something clenches around Eddie's heart and for a moment, he thinks _asthma, heart attack, anxiety_ before he realises - affection.

It's not something that he feels very often.

"I remember Pennywise," Eddie says. "What happened? Did we win?"

A shadow passes over Richie's face, something dark and complicated. As much as Richie has always liked to pretend that he says every single thing that comes into his head, cards on the table, _beep beep Richie_, Eddie thinks that Richie has always been more Derry than the other Losers.

Derry, with Pennywise underneath. Richie isn't anything close to evil, but there's always been something shuttered off from the rest of them.

"Yeah, we won," Richie says. "You killed it. You... saved my life."

Richie being sincere feels like nails dragged across a chalkboard and Eddie almost flinches, because it's - wrong. It's not _Richie_, this strange, honest version of him, looking at Eddie with soft eyes.

Ben had said that Pennywise had appeared to him as Beverly once. He hadn't explained any further than that but Eddie's a risk analyst and a coward, and he knows what it looks like when someone's scared to go after what they want, because there's a chance they won't get it. Or because there's a chance they will.

A risk analyst and a coward, sure, and a liar. Being honest, those aren't the reasons Eddie recognises it.

“Great,” Eddie says instead. “It’d really kill my buzz if your mom started crying while I was fucking her.”

Richie winces. “Jesus, that’s graphic.”

“She’d be crying because you’re dead,” Eddie clarifies. “Not because I’m bad at sex.”

“Because nothing says good in the sack like you having to say that out loud,” Richie says, but there’s a flush along the bridge of his nose. Eddie doesn’t know when he started noticing things like that.

“You wouldn’t know,” Eddie says but unbidden, he thinks of Myra saying _I want to start a family_ and the bile that always burned at the back of his throat whenever she brought it up.

He’d written it off as being sick, but now he wonders. Some of them had marriages - Beverly, Bill, Stan. None of them had children.

“Do you think the stuff with Pennywise really fucked us up?” he says and Richie hoots.

“No shit it fucked us up! We fought a murder clown when we were eleven, you don’t think that’s going to have some kind of lasting impact?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, suddenly angry. “That’s why I asked. You don’t have to make fun of everything. Ben seems like he’s doing pretty fucking well. You’re doing fine.”

“_I’m_ doing fine?” Richie repeats incredulously. He’s still laughing and Eddie curls his hands into fists in the bedsheets.

“You’re a famous comedian. You just did a sold out show.”

“Yeah, and I forgot my jokes not even halfway through,” Richie says. “Fucking Mike, worst timing ever. If I’d died, I wouldn’t even have gone out on a high. They’d probably have called it a mercy killing.”

He doesn’t sound like he means it, though. There’s the undercurrent again, Eddie can hear it now he knows it’s there. The sewers underneath the house.

“Before that, then,” Eddie says. “You were doing fine, weren’t you?”

Richie stills, mostly. His foot’s still tapping against the floor, a little too fast to be fine.

“Sure I was,” he says. “You know, sometimes I think maybe we all made a deal with the devil. With It. Like we get everything we want but it’s not quite right. The monkey’s paw.”

“You know that story?” Eddie says and Richie says, “I’m not complete fucking pigshit, thanks. No shit I know that story. You make a wish, it’s not what you want. We all lived that story.”

“Ben seems well,” Eddie says again and Richie makes a face.

“Ben was drinking water, you didn’t notice that?” It’s easy to forget sometimes, how observant Richie is while he’s bouncing off the walls. Just because everyone’s looking at him, it’s easy to miss how he’s looking back at you, too.

“People like water. It’s important to stay hydrated, being dehydrated can kill you, and a lot of people these days-”

“Yeah, okay,” Richie says. “Ten to one he’s an alcoholic. Bill can’t write a fucking ending to save his life and he’s a hack. As a fellow hack, I know one when I see one.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. “But Beverly-”

“Had bruises on her wrist when she got here. With a dad like that? She had no chance. Wise up, Eds.”

“Mike didn’t get anything he wanted,” Eddie says. But he gets it: that’s the deal. You only get the good shit if you leave Derry. If you leave Pennywise to do whatever the fuck he wants. Eddie had been more than happy to take that deal, to make six figures in a job that usually capped out at five, to marry his mom and listen to Barry Manilow records on repeat.

“That’s the deal,” Richie says, eerily echoing Eddie’s thoughts. Still, if anyone knows what Eddie’s thinking by now, it’d be Richie.

“Fine,” Eddie says. “I get it. So you get rich and famous, and what? What’s your deal, Richie?”

Richie shrugs a shoulder. “Good old fashioned repression. It knew. It knew my secret and It made damn sure that I’d never be able to - that I couldn’t -”

“What,” Eddie says.

“Well,” says Richie. “I wanted to fuck Paul Bunyan and nothing turns you off your homosexual urges like a murder clown filling his mouth with dagger teeth. Can you imagine those wrapped around your dick? Worst blowjob ever.”

It’s so far from anything Eddie had expected him to say that the words have to rearrange themselves inside his head to make sense.

He swallows, licks dry cracked lips. Richie is still looking at him, head tilted down.

“Paul Bunyan,” Eddie says. “You - sure you didn’t mean to say my mom?”

“No,” Richie says, “no, I definitely meant the giant fucking lumberjack statue. Yeah, talk about morning wood, right? Nothing says gay awakening like imagining being ripped apart on a five foot long wooden cock.”

After so many years of knowing Richie, he shouldn’t still manage to leave Eddie at a loss for words.

“What the fuck, Richie?”

“Well, it was either that or Ronald McfuckingDonald himself, and I don’t think Pennywise would play gay chicken just to get a rise out of me. There weren’t a lot of single good looking guys around, alright, and ol’ Paul looked like he knew how to show a guy a good time. Also, don’t forget - eleven. I was eleven.”

“Wait,” Eddie says, trying to see through Richie’s thickly spread layer of bravado and actually parse out the confession underneath, “you’re telling me that Pennywise - Pennywise knew, and we didn’t?”

“It was the ‘80s,” Richie says, like that’s obvious. Holy shit. It’s not even the gay thing - Eddie doesn’t feel like that’s really getting through right now - it’s Richie keeping a secret from them, from the Losers, from _him_. For years.

“I told you about the leper,” Eddie says.

“Not really the same thing, Eds, unless you were worried the leper would tell everybody you secretly wanted to fuck it.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says and then with his eyes squeezed shut, before he can stop himself, he says, “the leper wanted to blow me.”

“Oh my God!” Richie howls, like they’re eleven again and this is the funniest shit he’s ever heard in his life. “That’s so fucked up, Eds! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“_You_ wanted to fuck _Paul Bunyan_,” Eddie says and Richie pulls his mouth into a smirk and says, “What, like you didn’t? Paul Bunyan never tried to blow me.”

“So you’re gay,” Eddie says, desperately, feeling the conversation getting away from him. Thankfully, Richie goes with it.

“I’m not exactly going to start waving a rainbow flag around and listening to Dolly Parton but sure, yeah, if that’s what you want to call it.”

As if Richie doesn’t already listen to Dolly Parton, but what the fuck ever. Eddie frowns at him. Everything they’ve gone through and he feels more out of his depth with this than he did when he tried to impale a giant clown on a spear and for all his quips, Richie has turned a queasy shade of pale, blinking rapidly behind his glasses.

Eventually he says, “Are you going to puke? Don’t get it on me if you do.”

Richie raises his head to stare at him. “Fucking - what?”

“Don’t get it on me,” Eddie repeats. “You said you puked when you got the call, or when you killed - and that leper - I don’t, if it’s your nervous thing - I’ve had enough of it. It’s gross. Don’t get it on me.”

“Jesus, Eddie,” Richie says. “I just fucking bared my soul to you and all you can say is don’t puke.”

“Just,” Eddie says. It’s a lot to take in. “Why are you telling me?”

“Great question, great fuckin’ question. Wish someone had asked me that before I started. ‘Hey Richie, you thought about outing yourself to your best friend after he survives a near-death experience?’ ‘Thanks buddy, yeah, sounds like a great idea, let me get on that.’ I don’t know why I’m telling you, Jesus, Eddie. I just thought you should know. You died. We’ve been through some stuff together, you and me. Remember the doors? This entire fucking scenario was probably waiting for me behind Scary the entire fucking time. Why am I telling you? Don’t play dumb, asshole. You know why I’m fuckin’ telling you.”

“You know I’m married.” He hadn’t thought about Myra before then - hadn’t really thought about her since he left. If leaving Derry means losing memories then coming back feels like the same thing in reverse - like the Losers and Pennywise were his real life, in vivid sickening technicolour, and everything in New York was starting to feel blurry and faded.

Nothing has ever been as real as Richie, larger than life and twice as obnoxious.

“Yes, I know!” Richie hunches over in the chair, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes under his glasses. “I wish the clown had fucking killed me. Hey, Pennywise, if you’re still around and feel like putting me out of my misery any time soon that’d be fuckin’ A. C’mon, big guy, do me a solid. The one time I want a fucking murder clown around and we already killed it. Talk about timing.”

Eddie doesn’t think he’s gay but he’s never felt particularly straight. When they were kids, he’d tried looking at Bev like _that_, but that was because he’d thought that was what you did. He hadn’t looked at the others, in their tighty-whities, but Eddie had always been aware of which risks weren’t worth taking.

The only person he couldn’t stop himself from looking at was Richie. But who _couldn’t_ look at Richie? Between his mouth and his nervous, jittery energy, it wasn’t like he let you look anywhere else even if you wanted to.

Eddie thought that everyone felt like that, about Richie. It seemed as obvious as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, if that’s the way around it was. Now he’s starting to think: maybe that wasn’t an everyone thing. Maybe that was a _me_ thing.

“I think,” Eddie says slowly, “that he was sort of… trying for that with me, as well. With the leper. I mean, I was also worried about AIDS, so it could be that, but maybe like… maybe _I’m_ repressed.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, “you’re so repressed that if I shoved a piece of coal up your ass it’d turn into a diamond.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie says, but there’s no heat to it. “I don’t think Pennywise did that to me.”

“No, your mom did,” Richie says. “Right before she did _me_.”

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says. “Your dad.”

“Ouch,” says Richie, mimes grabbing his heart and staggering around, almost falling off the chair again. Eddie watches him, drinks it all in and thinks, _yeah, okay. That makes sense_.

As much sense as anything makes in fucking Derry, anyway.

-

This time, Eddie says, "Where are the others?"

He feels like he should probably have asked before now, but there was a lot going on with the whole not-being-dead thing, and the 'Richie and Paul Bunyan' thing was obviously really distracting. Eddie'd had some wild dreams after _that_ conversation. He wasn't sure if he'd woken up with a fear boner or not.

But now that things are starting to come into focus, he can't help noticing that Richie's here but the others aren't. He's not mad, exactly; he feels like he should've asked sooner but he knows they're okay. He can _feel_ that they're okay, like everything's settled into place. Like he'd know if they weren't. On a cosmic scale, anyway, like, he hopes he doesn't know if they get sick from the greywater or whatever. That's not something he needs updates on.

"Well," Richie says. "They thought you were dead, so they left. But not - not like it sounds."

"Okay," Eddie says. "But I'm in hospital? Surely they'd wait until there was a funeral, at least."

"Well," Richie says again. He's twisting his fingers together in his lap. "They thought you died in the sewers. So there wasn't - there wouldn't be a body. They left you there. _We_ left you there. There wasn't time, Eddie," and the words are tumbling faster out of his mouth now, "no one wanted to leave you, but we didn't have a choice."

Eddie bites back another _okay_ and a secondary _wow, great fucking friends you are_ because he doesn't want to say either of them, not really. Instead he takes a few deep breaths, remembers the two months he tried meditation until he threw his phone with the meditation app on it across the room in a fit of frustration and realised it wasn't for him.

"So how did I get here?" he asks instead and Richie shuffles his feet.

"I went back for you. After it was all over. I couldn't leave you there, not with It. I couldn't. So I went back in."

It sort of makes sense. Eddie has to admit that if Ben had died in the sewers, or at least been impaled on a monster claw, Eddie probably would've left him there too. Ben looks fucking heavy though, even considering the weight he lost. He definitely wouldn't have gone back for him. There are so many diseases you can get from direct contact with a dead body.

"Did you tell them I'm alive?" Eddie asks instead and Richie nods fervently.

"They wanted to come back, but they also..."

_Didn't_. Eddie doesn't blame them. Who would want to come back to Derry after finally getting out?

"That makes sense," he says instead. He's still tired, but getting less tired. The doctors think he can be discharged soon, but Eddie's going to enjoy being in a sterile environment for a little while longer first.

He lets himself sleep.

-

When Eddie is discharged from the hospital, he doesn’t have anywhere to go. He’s still in Derry. He’s starting to feel like he’s spent his entire life in Derry, even the bits he didn’t.

“You don’t want to go back to the motel," Richie says. “Unless you like blood stained showers and cryptic messages on the bottom of skateboards, in which case feel free to get your rocks off.”

Eddie scratches his chest. It itches a lot, like his skin’s knitting itself back together. There’s nothing there when he looks.

“I should probably let Myra know,” he says eventually. It’s the thing to do, isn’t it, when you walk out on your wife and don’t give her a reason. He’s probably supposed to go back to her, because they’re going back to their lives now. It’s dead. What else would they do?

“We-e-ell,” Richie says, his mouth curving into a smile. “The others already kinda took care of that for you.”

“What,” Eddie says and Richie spreads his hands out in front of his face like he’s painting a picture.

“Eddie Kaspbrak - missing, presumed dead. Well, dead presumed dead. What I’m saying is, Bev already called Myra. They all thought you were dead, in the cave. In the sewers. I told you this. Don't you remember?”

Eddie doesn't, but it's okay. He's starting to be able to tell the head injury memory losses from the other ones, and he knows they'll both come back, one way or another.

The smile’s gone now, even from Richie’s eyes.

Eddie should be more bothered by the break up of his marriage but instead he sits further up against his pillows and says, “Was I?”

“Were you what?”

“Dead,” Eddie says, marvelling internally at how calm he’s being about all this. Can you catch anything from being dead? What if his body still thinks it’s dead and his heart stops or his skin starts rotting away? “Did I die?”

Richie stares at him, mouth hanging open. Then he says, haltingly, “I don’t - I don’t know.”

He visibly swallows, takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. “They thought you were,” he says in a low voice, not meeting Eddie’s eyes. “The others. They wanted - we left you there. Because you were dead. But I couldn’t, after - even if you were, I couldn’t leave you in the sewers. You shouldn’t die with It. Not like that.”

“Maybe I just _looked_ dead,” Eddie offers, but Richie’s shaking his head.

“His - claw thing, spike, whatever, it went... it...”

He breaks off and Eddie realises too late that Richie’s trying not to cry - Richie Trashmouth Tozier, who Eddie’s seen cycle through every variation of angry and pissed off but never _scared_ is now crying, great gulping heaving sobs.

“Hey,” Eddie says, alarmed. He scooches himself closer to the end of the bed. “I’m right here, Richie. I didn’t die.”

“You did,” Richie says. “There was a fucking great big hole through the middle of you and I don’t want you to be dead but I don’t see how you survived that.”

“The turtle,” Eddie says. He wants to touch Richie, to reassure them both that he’s alive, but he can’t reach him from the bed so instead he awkwardly twists his hands in the sheets. “It was a turtle.”

“A turtle,” Richie says, then he’s hooting with laughter instead, his shoulders shaking. “The mortal enemy of a killer clown, of course it’s a fuckin’ turtle. Of course it is! How the fuck didn’t I figure that one out myself?”

“Because you’re a dumb shit,” Eddie says automatically. “Fuck’s sake, where am I supposed to go now? I’m supposed to be dead.”

“Well,” Richie says, so by mutual unspoken agreement they’re moving past the turtle revelation. Eddie didn’t even mean to say it out loud, didn’t know he knew it til he said it. “Beverly and Ben are on a yacht somewhere, because they’re both rich and beautiful so fuck them. Bill’s fucked off back to Hollywood to see if he can write a decent ending now that we’ve finished our Syfy channel bullshit. And Mike’s packing up his shit to get the hell out of Dodge. So contestant number three, what’s your choice?”

“The yacht,” Eddie says. “Obviously.”

Richie makes a buzzer noise. “_Bzzzt_. No dice. Pick again.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. He’s sick of the hospital all of a sudden, sick of lying in bed and trying to separate dreams from memories. The best way to tell what’s a memory is to make a new one. “Let’s go for a drive. You still got that stupid flashy car, haven’t you? I don’t care where we go. I just don’t want to be here anymore.”

“A drive,” Richie says. “_Si, senor._ I think we can manage that.”

“Oh my God, was that the Pancho Vanilla voice? Please tell me you’ve never done that in one of your acts.”

“Only because I don’t write my own material.”

“I fucking knew it! You said it before and no one gave a shit but I knew it. Way too funny to have just been you. You lying piece of shit.”

“You’re the only person who gives a shit,” Richie says. “So fuck you. Are you coming? Your carriage awaits.” He dips into a sweeping bow, and there’s mockery in every line of his body which makes it even worse, when Eddie looks at him and thinks _I want that_.

It’s not fair. A part of him still thinks that this is Richie fucking with him, that he’s giving Eddie a gay awakening just to turn around and go, “Oh, you thought I _meant_ that?” Like it’s another big joke from Richie Trashmouth Tozier, beep beep Richie, and off Richie fucks back to his real life leaving Eddie presumed dead and alone.

He’s a risk analyst. How do you stop assessing the risks?

Because weighed up like that, it’s probably not worth it. Everything they’ve gone through and Eddie still can’t trust Richie not to lie about this - or maybe it’s not a question of trust. Maybe Eddie can’t believe it.

Not all of their childhood fears died in the sewers.

-

Richie drives them to the kissing bridge. He doesn’t say anything, even as he pulls over and opens Eddie’s door, so Eddie doesn’t say anything either.

He can walk - turns out he’s not paralysed, but there could be a tumour lurking somewhere - so he follows after Richie, hands in pockets.

Richie knows where he’s going, so it’s easy to follow. They stand next to each other, looking at something - it takes Eddie a while - and then it’s like everything swims into focus. There’s a very specific carving.

Eddie looks at the graffiti. "Okay," he says, "I have to ask. Was it that time I got in the hammock with you?”

“Yes, your dirty socks and feet in my face turned me gay. No, it wasn’t because you got in the fucking hammock, you asshole, Jesus Christ.”

“You used to call me cute,” Eddie says. It was another thing that he’d forgotten until now, and it makes him worry about what else he could be missing. Some of the memories are gone because of Pennywise and Derry, and some are gone because of the head injury, and for all Eddie knows, there could be more besides.

“I also used to call you a little shithead,” Richie says, and Eddie shrugs a shoulder. He feels like an old man, all of a sudden.

“I didn’t mind it.”

“Yeah, you were always into verbal abuse, should’ve known you’d be into some kinky shit,” Richie says. “You probably let Myra sit on your face just so you could have a near-death experience.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie snaps and Richie’s face lights up and _shit_, out of the two of them, it’s probably not Eddie into kinky shit, alright. Richie always did use to try and goad Eddie into a fight, get his attention any way he could.

Eddie’s thought about Richie kissing people before - he had a dream when he was lying in hospital that Richie kissed him on the cheek, but he never told Richie that when he woke up. He thought about it as much as he thought about anything - thinks about it now. Can’t imagine Richie kissing anyone, being soft, putting his hand on their cheek. Can’t imagine Richie shutting his goddamn mouth for long enough to do it, either.

“I’d have brought you back,” Richie says suddenly. It’s out of the blue, doesn’t quite work with the conversation and Eddie can’t follow it. He doesn’t like that. He’d follow Richie anywhere, now.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Uh, from where?”

“Anywhere.” Richie says it fiercely, even as he grabs Eddie’s hands, gripping his fingers so hard it hurts, like he’s going to make him understand by sheer force of will. “I’d have found a way.”

“Okay,” Eddie says again, because it seems important but he’s not quite getting it. “Well, you got me into the sewers and you got me out again.”

Something complicated passes across Richie’s face and he takes a step back, not letting go of Eddie’s hands.

“Don’t say that.”

“What? I was being chickenshit and you - we couldn’t have done it if we hadn’t all been there, Richie. You know that.”

“If something had happened,” Richie says. “If you’d really died.”

It clicks into place then, for Eddie._ I’d have brought you back_ \- Richie had talked him into the sewers and seemingly dragged his body back out again and the way Richie’s looking at him - Eddie believes it. Richie would’ve done whatever it took, found a ritual, made a deal with Pennywise.

Eddie shivers.

“I’d have done the same,” he manages. It gets easier with every word he gets out. “I wouldn’t - if it had been anyone else, I couldn’t have… speared him.”

Not for the first time, Eddie wishes he was better with words. Still, Richie seems to get it, judging by the way he’s looking at him - that soft, solemn look again. Eddie doesn’t hate it this time.

-

Looking back, it’s obvious, in the way that things always are once you can separate yourself from the person you used to be.

Eddie was always trying to get Richie’s attention - was snapping at him, pushing him, always finding an excuse to touch him. When Richie wasn’t making fun of Eddie, Eddie was wondering why not - when Richie was grabbing Eddie’s cheeks and calling him cute, Eddie was trying not to think much of anything.

He told himself it wasn’t personal - that it was just Richie being Richie, wanting a reaction, and Eddie was better for a reaction than anyone else at that age. Even now, if he’s being honest.

Richie’s never met a button he wouldn’t push - or more accurately, a bruise he wouldn’t poke.

(They’ve never spent so much time together before this, just the two of them.)

But now Richie’s said it’s personal, or as good as, so it should be simple. Richie likes Eddie - has always liked Eddie - and Eddie _likes_ Richie. God, like he’s still eleven, worrying about who likes who, get the fuck over it, Kaspbrak. You’re a grown man. You were married, and how’d the hell you manage that when you can’t even admit that you want to suck Tozier’s dick?

Which - yeah. He does. He knows it. The thing is, that isn’t the problem.

The problem is, as Eddie sees it, is that Richie’s never going to do shit about it. Richie will poke and poke and poke and then back off and act like he doesn’t know what the fuck you’re talking about if you try bring it up.

And Eddie’s exhausted. He died, or he didn’t, and there’s been enough mystical turtle/clown/ritual bullshit that Eddie’s fought hard enough for a lifetime. He’s tired of fighting - even if that means fighting himself. He wants to have what he wants - there’s no mom and no wife anymore.

There’s just Richie, pulling his metaphorical pigtails, and there’s R+E carved into the kissing bridge.

Eddie guesses that what he’s trying to say is he’s basically got to shit or get off the pot. And he’s never been good at leaving well enough alone.

So he takes another look at the graffiti and he takes another look at Richie. Thinks about being dead, and all the things that he wouldn’t be able to do. About the things he didn’t think he could do, things that scared him shitless, things he did anyway. Thinks about being free from Myra, from Pennywise, from expectations and responsibilities.

It’s like being born again. Eddie can do anything he wants to now. He’s brave. He’s a monster-killer. And he wants to kiss Richie.

He’s still scared. But he knows he can do it.

-

When Eddie kisses Richie, he thinks it’s going to be weird. It’s going to be batshit insane, is what it is. But when he pulls back, right after, Richie gives him this look like Eddie’s never seen - not from Myra, not from his mom, he’s never even seen Bill or Bev or Ben look at each other like that and Eddie spent a lot of time looking at them look at each other when they were all eleven, trying to figure out what it was he was missing.

Turns out it was Richie, this whole time. Because this look Richie’s giving him, it almost hurts to see - just _desperate_, naked longing, vulnerability and heat mixed into one, like Richie’s been holding a torch for so long that it’s turned into a fucking wildfire.

It scorches through Eddie, from his mouth to his toes and all he can think is, _I didn’t know it was like this. I never knew it could be like this_.

He doesn’t want to know how he’s looking at Richie. He doesn’t even think about swapping germs.

“Wow,” Richie says, and grins. “You-sa on fire, meester.”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says. “Please, shut the fuck up before I lose my hard-on for you forever. Like, seriously, how did anyone ever think you wrote your own material, as if they’d ever let you put your racist shitty impressions in your act-”

“Shit, Eds, do you ever shut the fuck up,” Richie mumbles and the - the fucking _nerve_ of Richie, _Richie_ of all people saying that is just - maddening.

Richie looks like he can’t decide whether to push his luck further or not so Eddie makes the decision for him, surging forwards and standing up on his tip-toes to kiss him again.

“I want to punch you in your smug fucking face,” Eddie hears himself saying, even as Richie’s pressing his mouth against Eddie’s, hot and urgent and_ it’s not even weird_. It should be - it should be weird and surreal, even considering everything else they’ve gone through this week, but instead it’s just -

It’s really _good_, and Eddie’s furious about it. He pushes harder, smashing his mouth against Richie’s in a way he never kissed Myra, hard enough that his lips are gonna end up bruised and Richie makes this goddamn _sigh_ into Eddie’s mouth which drives him crazy.

Eddie bites down on Richie’s lower lip. It’s something he didn’t know he’d spent a lot of time thinking about until he does it, and it’s every bit as satisfying as you’d think. Richie’s goddamn mouth. Jesus.

When he pulls away, there’s a thin line of spit still joining them. It should be gross - Eddie saw it once when he watched cartoon porn (_what_, there’s only so much out there and sometimes these websites autoplay) and he thought it looked fucking disgusting.

He doesn’t mind it so much now. It’s kind of weirdly hot, even as he wipes his mouth off. Richie’s blinking, looking shell-shocked, and his bottom lip is swollen and still red. It’s so unfair that Richie - _Richie_ of all people is so hot. Ben’s been_ right there_ all week and Eddie can barely even remember what he looks like.

“I can’t believe you gave me a busted lip, you fucking maniac,” Richie says. “Jesus. That’s a risk you shoulda fuckin’ analysed.”

“Oh, like you give a shit,” Eddie says. He’s grinning, he can’t help it, and after a minute Richie smiles back at him, ducking his head a little bit like he’s shy. Richie! Shy! This whole thing continues to be so much more fucking surreal than the past week’s carnival of horrors. Is that fucked up? Eddie doesn’t care.

“So what now?” Eddie says, and Richie shrugs a shoulder. He’s moving closer to Eddie though, and bumps his shoulder against him, like he’s not quite sure if he’s allowed.

“Ball’s in your court, Eds. What, you want to be _boyfriends_? You want to hold hands and meet each other’s families?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, still riding the high of that fucking _kiss_. “Actually. I do.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Uh.”

“Although,” Eddie says, “my parents are both dead and I’m not sure Myra would want to meet my boyfriend.” He thinks about Bev, Ben, Bill, about Mike programming his number in Eddie’s phone and saying _don’t forget_, about Stan.

They’ve already met each others’ families.

“I want to go home,” Eddie says and Richie blinks at him, says, “Newsflash: you don’t have a home anymore.”

“You do,” Eddie says. He doesn’t say ‘home can be where you are’ but he feels like he might as well have done, the way Richie’s looking at him.

“You fucking sap,” Richie says eventually, disgusted. “I never knew. You’re some dumb romantic. Shit.”

“But,” Eddie ploughs on, “you’re not out, or whatever. Repressed, you said. So I don’t know - where we go from here. If you want…” He loses his nerve at the last second. It’s not fair, that he’s having to do all of this. Richie started it. He should at least have to do some of the scary bits.

“If I want,” Richie says and then understanding flashes across his face like the aftermath of an atom bomb. “You think I’m going to let you out of my sight again? Like, ‘sorry you died, let’s make out’ then I just fuck off back to LA? Yeah, I’m probably going to torpedo my career but fucking up on stage then disappearing to nowhere, Derry, probably did that for me already. Everyone’ll just assume I ‘me too’d someone anyway. This could be good for me, being gay. Less threatening. Revitalise my career. Get the woke brigade on board.”

“You are such a piece of shit,” Eddie says wonderingly and Richie bats his eyes and says, “Yeah, you fucking love it. You’re gay for this piece of shit.”

“So where do we go next?”

“Well, Eds,” Richie says. He slings an arm around Eddie, pulling him back to the car. “We go home.”


End file.
